Deferring the inevitable return ‘home’: Temporality and contingency in the transnational home-making practices of older Kenyan migrant women in London Leslie Fesenmyer

Introduction

Older Kenyan women’s migration to London is often narrativised as a temporary, though necessary, means of pursuing valued lives back ‘home’ such that their return to Kenya is seen as inevitable. Here, I focus on two intertwining questions that preoccupy these women: how will they support themselves when they return and to whom will they return? In doing so, I argue that their return is contingent on the (re-)making of familial relations and, thus, ‘home’. Their continuous preparations to return give rise to contradictory temporal experiences of delaying and biding time, and results in deferring the inevitable.